The Cohort by App Academyhttps://blog.appacademy.io
All things techThu, 24 May 2018 02:22:35 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.5https://blog.appacademy.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/cropped-logo-emblem-red-1000-5-48x48.pngThe Cohort by App Academyhttps://blog.appacademy.io
3232Q+A: Interview with App Academy’s Kelly Chung on developing a programming curriculum, student hardship, and morehttps://blog.appacademy.io/qa-interview-with-app-academy-instructor-kelly-chung-on-the-benefits-of-a-bootcamp-degree-developing-a-programming-curriculum/
https://blog.appacademy.io/qa-interview-with-app-academy-instructor-kelly-chung-on-the-benefits-of-a-bootcamp-degree-developing-a-programming-curriculum/#respondThu, 24 May 2018 02:22:35 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5410Many years ago, Kelly Chung was a mathematics major in at USC. He was a smart guy who could have easily gone in that academic direction but decided he didn’t want to focus on that particular career. After a few months thinking about his next step, and knowing he enjoyed his brief interactions with coding […] More

]]>Many years ago, Kelly Chung was a mathematics major in at USC. He was a smart guy who could have easily gone in that academic direction but decided he didn’t want to focus on that particular career. After a few months thinking about his next step, and knowing he enjoyed his brief interactions with coding through a few courses, he decided to apply to several coding bootcamps. After getting into a couple, including App Academy, he decided he would go for it and move to San Francisco from his hometown of Las Vegas.

In less than a year, he would graduate as a top student at App Academy and was offered a job as an instructor. What happened next was a great success story: He became a leader at the bootcamp, often leading discussions of growth. And many of those discussions led to new initiatives and curriculum program additions that would benefit successive coding cohorts, such as a weekend program that helps potential students get up to speed on coding concepts.

In order to understand key aspects of the program, we wanted to talk to Kelly about his perspective. We discussed the reasons behind curriculum changes, day-to-day instruction, and the reasons why a bootcamp degree may be better than a CS one.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity where needed.

Tell us about what students can learn at App Academy that they can’t learn anywhere else.

One of the things we tell people we specialize in is creating web applications, or websites in layman’s terms. [But] where we shine as an organization is our ability to adapt to what is popular within the market. Unlike traditional college CS programs, or Coursera, who have to go through a long update process, we can update our curriculum on the fly with updates that have happened on a day-to-day basis. For example, we’ve updated a couple of the programming libraries six to seven times in the past year. What we teach is the latest technologies and the latest practices on how to implement those technologies.

Can you explain the curriculum updates to programming languages in more detail?

Anytime a programming library or a framework for a programming language is released and updated, it means they’ve found security flaws. That is the worst case scenario. Less seriously, [it is] bugs they didn’t catch before or features they wanted to implement but couldn’t because it didn’t fit with the underlying philosophy for that particular tech. Creators of these technologies are constantly thinking about how to improve themselves and by extension, their libraries.

For that reason, technology has been an always-evolving thing. So it makes sense libraries need to update according to the times. Some of the things we’ve updated in the last couple of years included going from Rails 4 to Rails 5, which came with a lot of changes like action-cable and WebSockets — that’s how you get streaming to work. Our students are implementing things like Slack that need streaming services.

We’ve also updated webpacks to webpack 4, [we have] JavaScript updates on a yearly basis, and React is one of the hottest techs, and we’ve moved from the 14 to the 16 version. React router, a library we use in connection with React, is so popular that Facebook bought it.

What are the companies that are using these languages?

As a person that comes out of a bootcamp, it’s almost expected you’re learning the up-to-date tech because you don’t come from a CS background. So there’s gotta be another selling point. That’s what App Academy excels in, what you lack in the fundamentals of learning the theory in a CS degree, you make up for in the current modern-day applications of some of those theories. The libraries we work with that are popular in the market all stem from some of the fundamental principles of programming that eventually evolved into this new thing. You only need to know how to use it and work with it and know it extensively [and] that means being up-to-date with any updates.

Sometimes companies will use older versions of these technologies because they don’t want to update and potentially break something when it comes to their production level code but when it comes to them sitting down in an interview, [you need to know whether] you know this or not. It helps to be cutting edge when it comes to those technologies and that’s how you prove yourself in the interview room.

A lot of the day-to-day learning happens at App Academy through pair programming. Tell us about that.

Pair programming is the concept of working with another person on the same computer, sharing a keyboard and a mouse, working on the same exact text editor when it comes to editing a piece of code. Some people say ”what’s the point of that? You’re essentially halving the amount of coding potentially, if you have two people on the same computer.” But for educational purposes, it’s not about how much product you can push out, it’s more about how productively you can learn the concepts. We’re trying to get you to exercise by going through the projects.

And even if we are talking about efficiency, pair programming has been proven to be more efficient. There are different styles of programming and the reason for that is that when you pair a mentor or a senior-level engineer with a junior-level one, there’s going to be a gap. And we at App Academy really want to use this gap [of knowledge] between programmers to do the following: Number one, teach the lower-level programmers techniques that the higher-level engineers know and makes them more efficient.

Beyond that, pairing is a very important process to help you verbalize your thoughts beyond what you’re thinking in your head. Being able to flesh out those ideas is a way of practicing what it’s going to be like in the interview room. One of the biggest problems for any engineer is the ability to verbalize the answer even though you know you have it.

What are some of the main concerns people have about pair programming?

They say: “What if I get weighed down by my partner and what if I’m not carrying enough of own weight? I’d rather do this alone.” [But] being able to work with someone else is extremely important. Because being an engineer is kind of a solitary job. Not all the time but most of the times. So if you’re the only person who can understand your code, there’s going to be a problem. So pair programming, as a student as well as an instructor, is a very important part of this educational process considering the fact we are making you drink all of our material through a firehouse. There’s just going to be too much and you’re not going to be able to take it. And programming helps you [to take it].

What is something that makes App Academy special, that is a great asset?

I’ve always been an advocate of creating a sense of community at App Academy and for some reason, without fail, every cohort creates its own sense of community. It probably has something to do with that fact that they’re in the trenches, working through, and misery loves company. But what that also does is creates a network of friends that you can call upon, future engineers you can call upon, if you need help. Every cohort, you have at a minimum 60 people you will be able to be close friends that know what you’re capable of. If there’s one thing we don’t market enough is the sense of community. I’d say that App Academy’s number one asset is its people.

Give us an anecdote, maybe of hardship, that illustrates the difference that tells us how important community is at App Academy.

A lot of people at App Academy go through a lot of hardship. Whether it’s financial hardship or academic hardship, being insecure, not being sure they can make it. We give lectures about how to combat those problems.

One of the things we do at App Academy is give assessments that judge whether you make it through the course. Keep in mind these assessments aren’t necessarily created to trick people. We don’t make them too hard. It’s a way to test the material to know if you’ve understood it at a minimum level up to that point. If you don’t pass those particular assessments, we can essentially kick you out of the program and that comes with its own financial implication. But these assessments are important to your future at App Academy and for that reason it makes sense a lot of people put a lot of focus on them and they create study guides [to pass]. That’s common on college campuses but what is really phenomenal is some of these study guides have been passed on for years. From one generation cohort to another, a crazy chain of passing of knowledge.

You have your own story of hardship. Tell us about how you got through the program itself before becoming a teacher here.

As the bootcamp name implies, they work you to the absolute bone. They work you harder than I’ve personally ever been worked in my entire life. It’s a full-time commitment. You’re expected to give more than 40 hours a week when it comes to learning how to program and learning that week’s material if not that day’s material.

One of the most rewarding things I learned about myself if learning that I could do it. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I could not do it and was on the verge of dropping out. That was a constant internal conversation I had with myself as I was going through the cohort. That being said, with the help of the App Academy community, I was able to push myself to get through the entirety of the program and that was one of the more rewarding feelings I’ve ever had.

App Academy has a tradition of celebrating by giving you a shirt with the logo on it once you graduate and [when I got it], it was one of the prouder moments of my life.

How can App Academy students connect to other students that have gone through, that already have great jobs?

We have internal program that connects anyone that wants to have a conversation with a graduate. The new graduates are especially receptive to meet for coffee to refer you to their particular company.

We have a network that is very active but that doesn’t meant it is spoon-fed to you. You definitely have to work for it as a student. That means that if you want to work at a specific program, it’s up to you to reach out to the alumni that is there. It’s easy to do through our internal programs and LinkedIn. If you put in the effort and you reach out to them that you’re willing to learn about their company and want to have an interview with that alumni, they’ll be receptive to that idea.

How does that happen on the ground? Well, let’s just put it this way: as an instructor, I’ve created plenty of bonds with students that are in the industry. It’s a regular occurrence that students will look at a job at a company and I will ask them where they are looking to interview. Then they’ll tell me and I’ll look into my network and see if I’ve taught someone that works there and connect them. It’s clear connections can be made.

What can a person with a Computer Science (CS) degree from a college offers versus a person with an App Academy education?

OK, let’s talk about what CS grads learn: the most popular languages accepted by the top tech companies, or even medium and startup companies. That’s C++, Java, Python. Those languages are useful for a lot of other classes, like algorithm and data structures, digital logic, discrete mathematics, and operating systems. These classes are the absolute fundamentals of how computing came to be and how programming came to be and how those clashed together to create the modern day computer, starting with the history of computers all the way to modern day operating systems like Mac OS, Linux, Windows and so forth. They go through every step of the way.

Bootcamp grads don’t get much of that, or the history of computers up to the most important point. Rather, you get the bleeding-edge tool in technology today. What technology is now. The textbooks [CS grads] use are not updated quickly, they’re done a relatively slow pace and for that reason could never teach you about the modern day web application frameworks, data management tools. They also can’t really teach you what is being used in practice but rather give you a fundamental base.

So can an App Academy grad get a job over a CS grad?

It’s quite simple: It depends on the particular needs of that company. If the company is looking for relevant experience in specific technologies including the ones we teach here at App Academy, they’re more likely to want to reduce their training time by hiring someone who is already familiar with good practices and knows the fundamentals of programming. Why? Because a CS grad is going to learn the same fundamentals of how to code effectively and how to code expressively, to make sure the reader is be able to digest and understand exactly what you did with that piece of code. You won’t get the history of computer science or the more mathematic deep dive into computer science. Here at App Academy, you get a crash course version of that so that you can understand what you’re missing and also briefly touch upon those topics so you know they’re there and are able to learn them yourself.

Tech titans like Uber, Facebook, Google, Airbnb don’t typically test you on framework or tech specific stuff but rather on the fundamentals, which is where CS grads come in with an advantage. Because they’ve studied that for 4-plus years and have a better baseline when it comes to being able to implement these particular techniques. But at App Academy, we have a crash course in what those companies will test you in those environments and if you look at our record, we do well. Our program is [set up] so students have at least the minimum baseline to be able to pass those interviews and land jobs [at those] top places.

Tell us about the programs you’ve worked on at App Academy to help students become better coders.

One I did was the 10x Club but before I get into that let me explain how App Academy’s main program works. Unofficially a 13-week program, 9 of which teaches you about everything you need to know about making websites. The last four weeks are dedicated to giving you a crash course in algorithms and data structures as well as polishing all of your job search material so that by the end of the program you’re just ready to send out all your applications and be on your way to get a job. That latter part of the program is essentially a refresher course for anyone that’s been in the industry.

Not all techniques that you interact with, like algorithms and data structures, are being used as heavily as they test you in interview settings so what 10x Club is is a refresher course so that [programmers] can tackle an interview with a lot of confidence. We focus on technical skills including data structures, algorithms, and a couple of other mid-level and senior-level topics, like cryptography, security, and more. Another huge portion of it is working on soft skills, like how you present yourself in an interview setting, how you answer questions, how clear you are when you answer them even if you have the answer. We teach you a step-by-step formula to be able to answer these questions effectively.

You’ve also worked on the DevOps curriculum, right?

Yes. DevOps, for people who don’t know, is a relatively new field. DevOps is the the team that makes sure your web application, when it goes to production, is scalable, is fault tolerant, meaning if your server goes down, to make sure there’s another server that will make sure it will keep the entire app running. What I mean by scalable is the idea that if your site has a million users all of a sudden it can be handled by one user, absolutely not, that server would blow up, instead what it does is spread them across multiple instances of servers that are essentially copies of each other, on a concept called “load balancing,” so there’s a lot of very technical terms and concepts that go into how to make a website ready for production for average consumer to be able to use. That’s sort of really deep down into the extension program.

Currently the DevOps program is offered to job seekers, people that are looking for jobs in the industry that potentially want to sort of boost their particular CV and resume with this knowledge and more than just the resume boosting, really be able to explore an aspect of programming they didn’t know existed. For people that extend their knowledge of the field. Because one of these days, especially when they’re going to interact with engineers that are dedicated to DevOps, like understanding the lingo, is an important part of being in the industry.

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/qa-interview-with-app-academy-instructor-kelly-chung-on-the-benefits-of-a-bootcamp-degree-developing-a-programming-curriculum/feed/0Will Hardware Become Second-chair to Software? My Chromebook Says Sohttps://blog.appacademy.io/hardware-software-chromebook-os/
https://blog.appacademy.io/hardware-software-chromebook-os/#respondThu, 10 May 2018 23:07:40 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5403Chromebook laptops are awesome. After using the light-software equipped rigs for years, I’ve come to believe expensive and high-performance hardware is no longer needed for the vast majority of the tech-savvy public. They don’t need the latest-and-greatest CPU chip from Intel or a budget Windows laptop; Chrome OS’ use of Z-ram and ECM storage, essentially, […] More

]]>Chromebook laptops are awesome. After using the light-software equipped rigs for years, I’ve come to believe expensive and high-performance hardware is no longer needed for the vast majority of the tech-savvy public. They don’t need the latest-and-greatest CPU chip from Intel or a budget Windows laptop; Chrome OS’ use of Z-ram and ECM storage, essentially, never pose much of a bottle neck.

Let me further explain.

Like many people, I live my working hours of the day on Google’s Chrome browser. I type all my documents in Google Drive. YouTube has replaced my cable package. I edit any photographs that I may need to plug for editorial pieces in Pixlr. I, like literally 80 percent of current computer users in the workforce, perform all my daily tasks in WiFi hubs. So as I contemplated my full immersion in software the other day (no, I wasn’t Lawnmowered man’ed), I was thinking: will hardware become the second-chair to software as it capitalizes on our newfound cloud-based, Wifi ecosystems? I think it will, if for no other reason than Murphy’s Law. All the data shows that the new age of internet-based software will create a market of accessibility and quality. Buyers will no longer have to lay down over a thousands dollars for the latest, aluminum-clad Macbook Pro, nor will they have to resort to forking over near as much for a 360-degree hinge laptop from Lenovo.

My own experience explains the reasoning behind my thinking. I own an Asus Flip C201A Chromebook and it feels as good and as quick as any Macbook I’ve ever owned. Seriously. It also has an incredibly tactile keyboard, a touch 2,400 x 1,350 screen that’s perfectly bright —and it only put me back whooping $437, with tax and shipping included. Suffice to say, it’s a clear as day pick for the more frugal among us.

The tables would’ve been turned against this type of positive review just a few years ago; pre-2014, capable CPUs and disk drive storage was still something left for elite price tags. But, just like in the automotive industry, innovation and engineering trickle down overtime. SSDs (Solid State Drives) and other means of flash storage, like turbo-throttling CPUs and decent RAM cartridges, are now commonplace in mobile computing devices. Essentially, once the mobility hurdle was crossed in the computing space, the only obstacle left to ascend was to make needed “performance” components available to the masses—and they’re here.

This most recent technological breakthrough leaves little wiggle room for groundbreaking performance enhancements that are relevant to the everyday consumer. But it leaves the door wide open for software to take the reigns and finally capitalize on products’ universal gains.

It’s a win-win that is worth every bit of consumer celebration. And for me, it all starts with the Chromebook.

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/hardware-software-chromebook-os/feed/0Infographic: App Academy 2017 Alumni Surveyhttps://blog.appacademy.io/infographic-app-academy-2017-alumni-survey/
https://blog.appacademy.io/infographic-app-academy-2017-alumni-survey/#respondWed, 09 May 2018 17:58:00 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5396When it comes to its stated values, App Academy practices what it preaches. For one, the bootcamp takes responsibility for students’ success by deferring course payment until after they get a job. It’s also true in regards to its promise to change students’ lives. To better understand their path, the bootcamp last year sent out […] More

]]>When it comes to its stated values, App Academy practices what it preaches. For one, the bootcamp takes responsibility for students’ success by deferring course payment until after they get a job. It’s also true in regards to its promise to change students’ lives. To better understand their path, the bootcamp last year sent out a survey to alums. The results revealed App Academy has made a life-changing and tangible impact on our students.

Hundreds of App Academy’s former students took the survey. Among other things, we found which companies they work for and how much money they make. We also found their level of job satisfaction and whether they believed in their company’s values. The latter two questions were key because they showed App Academy’s long-lasting, positive effect on students’ love of coding and on their ability to find the best place to do it in. We’ve written another article on the implications of that finding but the main gist is most alums were happy to attend the bootcamp.

The survey also found other data that distinguishes the bootcamp from competitors.

The median salary of alumni prior to attending App Academy, the survey found, was $45,000. Within a year following the course, the median salary of alum software engineers rose to over $100,000. When you compare these numbers to other bootcamps, App Academy moves ahead of the game.

The independent coding bootcamp research organization Course Report found in its own survey of all bootcamp graduates that average prior student salary was $46,974 and that the post-bootcamp average was $70,698. Yes, App Academy graduates make $30,000 more in salary for first post-bootcamp jobs. That is also higher than the U.S. national median salary for web developers at $64,970, according to data from US News & World Report.

In Course Report’s survey, industry average alumni earned $90,421 for their third jobs. For our survey, we found that within two-to-three years of graduation, alumni salaries went up to $130,000. The App Academy number is higher than even the median salary of U.S. web developers, which is currently at $116,620, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bureau estimates that coding jobs will grow 17 percent by 2024, so it looks like coding is a great long-term career option.

Another point found was that at least 130 students went from minimum wage or poverty-level income to six figures. That is a huge deal that shows how App Academy can transform lives.

We also found great individual stories of success. One student went from a $30,000 job in education to a $100,000 salaried job with full medical, dental, and retirement benefits at a top New York media organization. Another worked as a $20,000-a-year fine artist and now makes more than $100,000. And one student worked as a chemical lab assistant for years, barely making ends meet on less than $20,000 a year. After a few years, he’s now a front-end manager making $140,000.

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/infographic-app-academy-2017-alumni-survey/feed/0App Academy 2017 Survey: After Reaching $100,000, Coders Look for “Meaningful” Workhttps://blog.appacademy.io/app-academy-2017-survey-after-reaching-100000-coders-look-for-meaningful-work/
https://blog.appacademy.io/app-academy-2017-survey-after-reaching-100000-coders-look-for-meaningful-work/#respondWed, 09 May 2018 17:55:52 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5390People choose a career in web development for many reasons. But an App Academy alumni survey and interviews with them reveal most do it for love of the work and that salary plays a key part. The assessment comes from App Academy’s 2017 alumni survey, taken by a representative number of students throughout the bootcamp’s […] More

]]>People choose a career in web development for many reasons. But an App Academy alumni survey and interviews with them reveal most do it for love of the work and that salary plays a key part.

The assessment comes from App Academy’s 2017 alumni survey, taken by a representative number of students throughout the bootcamp’s six-year history. The survey was created to find the specific impact App Academy has on people’s careers.

Among the results, we found:

The median salary of alumni prior to attending App Academy was $45,000

Within a year following the course, the median salary of graduates working as software engineers throughout the United States rose to $100,000

Most importantly, we were happy to find in the survey and through conversations that:

The first salary change, between $45,000 and $100,000, most raised alumni coders’ overall job satisfaction.

This result is probably the most consequential aspect of an App Academy education. The bootcamp takes people who are in difficult economic positions, gives them skills to get a job to get out of that difficulty, and once there, gives them the opportunity to look for meaningful work.

One of ways we used the data to find this result was by looking at the difference between “compensation levels” and “meaningful work” on a satisfaction scale. We found that the longer people stayed in the profession, the less money mattered. Things like making a positive impact on the world and meaningful work became more important. Here’s a table showing the difference.

In order to contextualize the data, we reached out to Prof. Michael G. Katz from UC Berkeley’s Haas Business school. We wanted to see if the results matched what he knew about the relationship between software career trends and programmers’ levels of satisfaction. While there are exceptions, with some choosing development mainly for the money, he told us most do it because they enjoy it.

Most developers derive satisfaction in two ways, Katz says: through careers of achievement and careers of advancement. The former seeks great project challenges and expertise, while the latter wants decision-making power and status. Obviously, both can involve aspects of the other — a developer can enjoy building companies and a CEO can code. In a broader sense, though, Katz says most developers fit into the ‘achievement’ slot because they love it.

A Livable Wage

The traditional approach to an education in Computer Science can be expensive. Four years at university can lead to over $200,000 in debt, coupled with a loss of four years of opportunity cost.

In 2012, App Academy created a new option for people who wanted to start a career in web development – a 12-week coding bootcamp. App Academy is the first coding bootcamp to provide web development education with aligned incentives. You only pay once you’re hired. It’s tbut hat simple. The results that followed were high placement numbers and average salaries as high as $105,000. However, to ensure students consistently found jobs with high salaries, the curriculum had to be rigorous. And that rigor led to something interesting – it kept people in the program who really loved to code.

Judging by the survey and interview responses, this turned out to be true. But, students have to earn a livable wage first, says Jeff Fiddler, the long-time Senior Manager of Curriculum.

“So there’s a point where people need the money. Being able to go out and spend time with friends without worrying about money. But once that number is hit, the rest becomes about the love of the work,” Fiddler says.

According to conversations between alum and App Academy instructors, salary has been an important factor for applicants, but almost never the main motivation. Fiddler says this is more the case for applicants who’ve never supported themselves in their early 20s. Those in their late 20s and older, including students with family, do consider long-term financial security.

Specific salary numbers of programmers that go from being unhappy under a livable wage to one where they’re more comfortable, Berkeley’s Katz told us, are hard to find. But he says App Academy’s numbers match satisfaction levels he’s studied in metro areas with high living costs.

“Starting salaries [for programmers] are around $100K to $170K just in San Francisco. Those people have debt and…still have roommates. But happiness peaks at a certain level of income that some say is about $70,000. That’s not a universal number. That’s in the context of a living situation and environment.But there’s a tapping out on the material side of it. In careers of achievement like software engineering, work without love of work leads to happiness fading.”

Katz says research studies have shown moving from $200,000 to $300,000 in salary leads programmers to a level of happiness that’s not much different than when they make little more than $100,000. But the difference between $50,000 and $100,000 is massive. “It’s gonna be night and day for somebody that lives in the [expensive] Bay Area,” he says.

App Academy’s 2017 alumni survey reflected this difference. When we asked alums whether they were satisfied with their current job, post-App Academy, with a score of 1 for very unsatisfied, to 10 for very satisfied, the median salary for all scores was nearly identical, as the table below shows.

“I am satisfied with my job.”

Satisfaction Score

Median Salary

7 and above

$110,000

6

$111,000

5

$111,000

4

$110,000

3

$110,000

2

$114,500

1

$120,000

It’s important to note most of App Academy graduates — 83 percent — were “satisfied with their job” (with a score of five or more). This number fits the Livable Wage threshold Katz mentions and is also above overall median salary the Bureau of Labor Statistics found in its own survey.

Interestingly, alums who said they were least satisfied were so because of other reasons besides salary or career happiness. Instead, they said it was due to cultural unfitness, an inability to grow within the company, or not seeing their company make a positive impact.

One thing App Academy did notice about salary and dissatisfaction through conversations was that unhappiness was generally tied to feelings of being underpaid relative to colleagues. Fiddler said this is common.

“Most people get jobs where they feel adequately compensated. But people are pretty well-apprised of their worth and we keep tabs on [the latest salary trends to help them]. If someone is paid less than they deserve, that can really hurt happiness.”

Love of the Work and the Role of Expertise

So becoming a great programmer requires a love of the work, but how can people know if they love something they’ve never tried?

According to interviews, gaming is one of the top ways people discover an interest in coding. Most appreciate puzzle-like challenges that coding languages provide.

Jeff Fiddler says playing games can be challenging and creatively fulfilling.

“I’d say the general belief of [people who get in is that] they are actually interested and excited about writing software, about being able to make things professionally and to use creativity to solve problems,” Fiddler tells us. Seen another way, solving puzzles can be a rewarding experience that people can learn to love.

And enjoying coding doesn’t mean you have to reject or hate your previous profession. We’ve heard from successful App Academy students who liked what they were doing, but found software engineering equally or more fun. Later, they got into the bootcamp to turn their hobby into a profession, which was personally rewarding. Few said it was because of their satisfaction was rooted in earning a high salary.

Choosing web development as a means to find creative happiness is probably still underrated. Fiddler says he knows artists who attended the course who loved making art and transferred their “maker” genes from physical canvases to digital ones and were just as happy.

Once again, the focus on enjoyment is part of the career “achievement” personality type Katz brought up. People choosing programming careers appreciate learning for its sake.

“With happiness, there’s a plateau from how much money impacts happiness. Particularly in tech because it’s such an achievement-oriented business,” he told us. “Research shows where people sustain themselves in the business, [they stay] interested in it because they love it and want to produce it. Whether they call it art or product or whatever, they identify with it.”

The Generational Change

Based on our interviews and survey, we can also make an informed assumption that now and in the immediate future, more people will be interested in joining a coding bootcamp because they care about coding.

According to App Academy stats, about 90 percent of people who completed the full-time program are between the ages of 18 and 35 and out of those, most said they sought to be happy above any other reason.

Katz says this generation, raised on a culture this type of purpose-driven work, will change industry values.

“You have Millennials pushing 40 and Millennials in their early 20s. In another 20 years this kind of mindset will lead to [full] achievement-orientation rather than advancement. People running companies now are still from the age when hierarchy mattered, [in Baby Boomers and Generation X]. So you’re going to see this trend continue just because of the built-in culture.”

Jeff Fiddler agrees. His conversations with alumni who are unhappy at their workplaces feel either poorly managed or poorly motivated. Those with great work environments and culture rave about it, he says. And even when that happens, their experience at the bootcamp and the skills they learn there help them get through and see the positive of any situation.

“People that come out of our program are the most committed, dedicated, grittiest people and we have so much confidence in their abilities. [So when I have conversations with alumni who are unhappy in their roles], I give them a reality check: You are incredibly employable and are a great fit somewhere else. You have so many other opportunities, I encourage them to consider their options.” Fiddler says. When it comes to App Academy’s alumni network, purpose-driven connections and work are not something we have to wait years for — they’re already an integral part of the program that graduates carry with them everywhere they go.

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/app-academy-2017-survey-after-reaching-100000-coders-look-for-meaningful-work/feed/0Analog Design Strategy In a Digital Worldhttps://blog.appacademy.io/analog-design-strategy-digital-world/
https://blog.appacademy.io/analog-design-strategy-digital-world/#respondWed, 02 May 2018 18:00:40 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=2221As we move further into the 21st Century, all brick-and-mortar businesses are sure to continue their broad migration to digital. And one of the consequences of this move is that we will continue to experience the world through screens. The temptation for designers and marketers working in this developing digital world then, is to think […] More

]]>As we move further into the 21st Century, all brick-and-mortar businesses are sure to continue their broad migration to digital. And one of the consequences of this move is that we will continue to experience the world through screens.

The temptation for designers and marketers working in this developing digital world then, is to think about their work in primarily a digital way. I think that’s the right way to think about it but there’s something else to consider: the focus on digital products may cause us to sacrifice our interactions with the real world.

Why is this important? Well, it’s pretty obvious isn’t it? We have to remember that talking with people face-to-face, obtaining physical goods, and learning about our physical surroundings, is still incredibly important. When designing for digital, designers must always consider the physical consequences of their choices. This helps amplify the effectiveness of both their design and business.

All About Choices

Glen Hartman, Senior Managing Director at Accenture Interactive, discussed a design challenge he faced while attempting to optimize a client’s search strategy. Understanding that different consumers would want to reach out to the business in different ways, the company added a phone number and other CTA’s to the client’s search results. So instead of forcing consumers to enroll in one specific way, customers became free to enroll in whichever way they wanted, through a click-to-chat, a phone call, an email, a physical visit, or via the site.

Their effort increased sales. They also found that a disproportionate amount of consumers began coming through the web and completed their transaction through the call center. This increased profits but also limited the amount of sales attribution the digital media team received. Why? Because consumers used the call center instead of converting via the method that gave them the phone number in the first place. The digital team was displeased while the call center was thrilled. The latter team made more on commission than ever before because of a phone number in optimized search results!

Hartman and Accenture Interactive had to work with the client to revamp their attribution models in order to keep profits flowing while giving credit where it was due. This is an excellent case study in how companies must be aware of doing something as simple as optimizing search results. A small change like adding a phone number can cause a huge shift.

But it was also a study in the importance of the human touch.

The Personal Touch

Consumers, when given the chance, want to call in and speak with a real person to make purchases. In the example above, they weren’t going so far as to use search results to make an in-store appointment but were still seeking a personal experience than the web could provide. By giving people the opportunity to interact with a person, instead of completing their transaction online, the organization increased their sales. That’s a huge design detail.

In my own career, I’ve come across situations where real-world interaction had serious value.

In my day job as a University communications official, I often struggle to cut through the noise to get students to pay attention to the things we want them to. The hardest thing is ensuring we are telling students about the right requirements, issues, or events that are important to them in the right way.

In a recent student government meeting to discuss promoting their efforts, students brought up this concern. A group wanted a digital campaign highlighting their efforts that made them feel available and gave organizations a face. More importantly, they wanted to be physically seen.

They wanted to speak with students face-to-face to ask them what they wanted out of their government. To do so, they dedicated representatives’ time to standing in high-traffic areas on campus to ask students what they cared about.

I have to admit I hadn’t considered this. When students told me it was part of their plan, I was taken back by its simplicity. I also felt silly. Of course, it made sense. How could I not have thought of actual, real-life canvassing? Receiving an email about their efforts is one thing, but meeting and speaking with them is another. In my haste to design an optimal digital outreach strategy, I had forgotten to consider direct outreach tactics.

What’s Next In Design Strategy

As an example of the need to stay present, consider virtual and augmented reality.

While VR is fascinating and good for immersive experiences, AR is probably more useful. The surprising, if short-lived, dominance of Pokemon GO is a prime example. For a short period of time, you could visit major population centers and see a large number of people attempting to catch Pokemon digitally dropped into physical spaces. The participation was huge. When was the last time you strapped on a VR headset or dove into a 360-video on YouTube?

One of more consequence, though, can be found in Amazon’s forthcoming use of AR in online shopping.

Through Amazon’s mobile app, you can use AR technology to envision how a pot, or chair, or whatever else may actually look in your home. Technology like this is going to be preferable because we appreciate the useful integration to the real world that it provides. The design of the meeting of the digital and analog worlds, and their strengths, is the real benefit. People in design must see these kinds of opportunities when creating. They must resist the urge to only take advantage of the opportunities available to them in digital and seek out opportunities to tie analog and digital together, likely increasing their effectiveness.

As we immerse ourselves further into digital and further integrate it into our lives, all designers, communicators, and technologists must remember that it is just that, an integration. We don’t want to be lost to the world around us, our heads buried in a screen while we miss out on what’s happening right in front of us. When conceptualizing and designing new products, we would do well to remember that.

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/analog-design-strategy-digital-world/feed/0The Dear Eli Column: Take Your Power Back and Get A Jobhttps://blog.appacademy.io/the-dear-eli-take-power-job-int/
https://blog.appacademy.io/the-dear-eli-take-power-job-int/#respondTue, 01 May 2018 00:21:35 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5381After a brief hiatus, the Dear Eli column is back this week with great advice from App Academy’s Career and Talent Development Manager Eli Blair. Check out the previous versions of the column and expect to see future videos from him about the focus the bootcamp curriculum has on important soft skills and interviews. Onward! ***** […] More

]]>After a brief hiatus, the Dear Eli column is back this week with great advice from App Academy’s Career and Talent Development Manager Eli Blair. Check out the previous versions of the column and expect to see future videos from him about the focus the bootcamp curriculum has on important soft skills and interviews.

Onward!

*****

Dear Eli,

It never fails. I tend to always get really nervous on phone screens and interviews. I feel like I never answer the questions well enough. I often feel like I do a really bad job. Help!

— Leslie K., San Jose, California

*****

Hi Leslie,

Thanks for the email. As you can imagine, there are millions of job seekers who feel just like you, so you are not alone. However, I believe there is a strong tendency for applicants to give away their power during and after the interview. Here are some examples of what I mean:

1. YOU ARE POWERLESS

During interviews, applicants often lose their personal power with thoughts like “I want them to like me.” Or “I hope my answers are ok and I don’t sound stupid.” When we discuss “personal power” it relates to your confidence and self esteem. How do you show up for interviews? Are you strong and confident or nervous and scared? Here is what we know: We are powerless over people and their reactions. I cannot control whether someone likes me or not. Can you control how people feel about you? Probably not. The only thing you can control is being authentic and doing your best.

So the number-one thing you need to remember when interviewing is that they want you and that is why they are speaking with you. Half the battle is over! Don’t worry about what they are thinking about you during the interview. You can’t control it. Do show up as your best and most authentic self. They want to “connect” with you. Now help them imagine how working and connecting with you everyday will get results.Let me tell you a quick story to put this advice into context.

Years ago, I interviewed with a company three times in San Francisco. I did really well and they said to me, “Hey Eli, we are going to fly you to Atlanta to our headquarters. You will be there for the day and interview with 27 people over the full day, meeting with several people every half hour.” You can imagine my initial response. Terror!!!!

However, I took a moment to step back and think. I am powerless over what 27 people think and feel about me. So I switched my story to that of “Bring it on!!!!” Bring on the questions. I did that because at the end of the day, all I could do was to just be myself and show them who I was. With that attitude, of course I was a little nervous for the first minute or so. But then I let go. I let go of the FEAR (which I like to consider as a nice acronym for False Evidence Appearing as Real) and the crazy internal stories I would have told myself and just breathed and had fun. I took my power back!!! At the end of the day I did extremely well.

However, they did not actually hire the position. It was kind of a bummer for a hot second but honestly, it ended up being an awesome experience because I took that experience with me and used what I learned about myself for other interviews.

2. NERVOUSNESS

When applicants buy into nervousness during phone screens and interviews, they give away their power and do not take care of themselves. All of a sudden, hands shake, voices quiver, thoughts become lost, and answers become disorganized with the potential to ramble with filler words. Because of nervous energy, interviewees feel they must answer every question immediately which can lead to poorly thought-out and rambling responses.

YOU MUST TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF DURING AN INTERVIEW. Bring water. Slow it down. Just like on an airplane, you must put the oxygen mask on yourself first before helping others. Same holds true during interviewing. Here are ideas that help. — Remember to breathe. If you get really nervous for interviews, exercise vigorously before to burn off some energy and to get your “calm” power back. — Tricky questions? If you need to, rephrase the question and take a few moments before responding. “Describe a time that I failed? Hmmm…Let me think of that one….” — Pause to collect your thoughts. Respond. (Just don’t pause too long as that can become creepy.) Just know, a few moments to gather your thoughts is no problem. Again, another way to bring the power back for YOU to take control of how you respond. — Also, remember to ALWAYS GET YOUR VOLUME UP during all interviews. Having a strong and powerful volume will take away much of any shaky voice and filler words. This will give you a powerful presence…guaranteed.

3. “OH…THEY WILL SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME AND NOT LIKE ME”

Often, prior to an interview, people begin to tell stories doubting who they are, their capabilities and their power. They’ll say these false things:

“Maybe I am not qualified for the job.”

“I’m too (negative thought here) for this position.”

“I have to get this job now…I’m desperate.”

But if someone is interviewing you, whether it be a phone screen or an in-person interview, there is something about you they want to know. They’ve reviewed your resume or someone referred you, so there is a definite interest. You are halfway there!!! Appreciate yourself for this first step. Something is setting you apart.

4. REFERRAL TIME

If you have a referral into the company, then you’re already starting off with one amazing commonality for discussion. “My friend Pat really loves her position and speaks really well about your company…” You have an “in.” If you do not know someone, then your resume and experience has shined!

5. YOU GET TO TELL THE STORY

As my coach Allen tells me, “Eli, you get to choose whether you live in abundance or scarcity, as that is what you will attract.”

What is the difference between the power you attract when you live in scarcity and negativity versus when you live in abundance of love and positivity? It’s a great question to ask, and not just for work purposes. Before interviews, take a moment to ask yourself whether this is the story you want to tell before the interview and think about the story you want to be telling yourself AFTER the interview?” Doing so will help you find yourself.

6. IT’S TAKING FOREVER TO GET AN INTERVIEW?

This might be true depending on your industry and especially on your strategy. When you apply to one place a day and maybe only talk to two people a week about potential opportunities, you have little power. NOBODY IS GOING TO MANAGE YOUR CAREER BETTER THAN YOU!!! Looking for work is hard work. Period. You need to be like a door-to-door salesperson. Nobody is going to sell you but you! Doors will slam. People will say no. However you get to choose this story too. You get to make the choice of what you will do when you get rejected.

“Oh, it’s just so hard,” I hear people whine to me everyday. Yea, you bet it is. Looking for work is brutal. But it’s worse when you live in despair and give all your power and energy away. You have to figure out how to take your power back, even during the tough times. Only you can do it. Figure out if you need to apply more, network more, or to go to more events. You get to choose whether you will live in “powerful” or “powerless.”Keep the following example in mind.

Years ago, my best friend and I would go out to the bars all the time. He was fearless. He’d go up to tons of people, buy them drinks and was bold. His strategy was that he was going to take someone home that evening. When I questioned him about this and how he could do this (as I was jealous of his boldness) his response was, “it only takes one!”Like my friend, you might have to buy tons of drinks, get rejected and go for more, but at the end of the day, it only takes one “Yes.” And as a wise friend has told me, “Every No is one step closer to a Yes.”

7. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!

When people get rejected, they tend to make it personal. In some cases that is true. If you messed up in an interview, good for you!!! Appreciate the learning and move on. Keep in mind that sometimes, “it’s not about you.” Maybe they were looking for a blonde woman, an older man, a younger man, a tall woman, a short woman. Maybe they decided to move someone into a role from within the organization. Who knows? Try not to internalize it. If you did make errors, learn from them and grow. However, when you live in self “beat up” mode, you give away your power to an unknown factor. Two years ago, I interviewed with a company and in the third round I was rejected. While I was quite surprised as the interview went really well, I realized it was not about me. I interviewed really well for that position. I took my power back and moved on. Maybe, if you get rejected, the universe is sending you a message that you’ve “dodged a bullet” as that position was not the right one for you.

Finally, a few years back I was in a meeting when a young woman was discussing the concept of fear. She asked a very simple and bold question which I will now pose to you. “What would be possible in your life if you let go of fear?”

8 QUICK TIPS FOR INTERVIEWS

Practice. The first question most interviewees get is “Tell me about yourself.” Know this answer and practice the response.

Look for other interview questions online. Make sure you are practicing out loud and record yourself on video. (Don’t practice in a mirror. Use your phone.) As adults we learn quicker when we can see and hear ourselves.

Get a friend to practice with you and ask for feedback.

Know your strengths, weaknesses, a time you failed, challenges you have had on the job and with people.

Be able to discuss any bullet point in more detail from your resume.

Research the company and person(s) interviewing you. Look on LinkedIn and other social media.

Have 3-4 questions ready for when they ask “Do you have questions for us?”

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/the-dear-eli-take-power-job-int/feed/0Q+A: App Academy’s Anastassia Bobokalonova on Bootcamp Life, Why Programming Is for Everyone, and Morehttps://blog.appacademy.io/app-academy-self-learning-anxiety-bootcamp-life-programming-everyone/
https://blog.appacademy.io/app-academy-self-learning-anxiety-bootcamp-life-programming-everyone/#respondTue, 24 Apr 2018 23:18:40 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5376Some people say the coding bootcamp life is not for everyone. The pace is fast, the amount of information is significant, and the emotional toll is real. That is true for our full-time course at App Academy — we expect our students’ best efforts for 15 consecutive weeks. The reputational effect of said effort is […] More

]]>Some people say the coding bootcamp life is not for everyone. The pace is fast, the amount of information is significant, and the emotional toll is real. That is true for our full-time course at App Academy — we expect our students’ best efforts for 15 consecutive weeks. The reputational effect of said effort is huge since it results in students that get the best jobs. But Anastassia Bobokalonova believes those features can also be motivating carrots that anyone can accomplish.

A former App Academy bootcamp student-turned teaching assistant, Anastassia has been around the App Academy program for more than a year. She’s gone from working at a lab in the biological sciences post-college, with a limited knowledge of programming, to becoming someone who’s been looked at by tech companies as a major asset. She’s confident, smart, and always thoughtful, qualities that led her to further develop her tech and leadership skills at App Academy.

She also has a high bar for the emotional alertness needed in workplaces — both at App Academy and at companies students are placed. She believes bootcamp teachers’ empathetic approach helped her get through the program and now works to develop the same support for students.

Before she left to join a Silicon Valley startup, we sat down with her to talk about important aspects of her time at App Academy and why she feels it’s the best option for potential coders.

The conversation has been edited for time and space.

You’ve been at App Academy awhile. Tell me what people learn.

We teach Ruby in order to use Ruby on Rails as well as JavaScript to be able to do front-end development. By learning both, a backend language and frontend language, we are able to teach them a full-stack.

Please explain what a full-stack is.

When you visit a webpage — some are just static, they show some content and the user can’t interact with the webpage at all. A full-stack web application means that when you visit a webpage you’re able to interact with it and the program stores and remembers the way that you interacted with it. So for example being able to make a reservation at a restaurant, to create, delete, update things, interact with the application requires having some sort of storage system. Like a database. And it requires having a server running able to respond to the request [and] having a front-end the user can interact with. So a full-stack means all the layers of the stack: a database level, an API level, and a front-end level.

Tell me about the first four weeks of the programming course, which is what the rest of the course relies on.

We start off by teaching Ruby, [which is] a friendly language to learn. In fact, it was designed for that purpose. The first two weeks are for [building] basic programming challenges and basic games and projects all in Ruby. After that, we teach them SQL, which is the language of databases and information storage. We do that to allow them to interact with databases. And then we teach them a Ruby version of SQL called Active Record. So they are able to go back to using Ruby but they [now] understand the Ruby methods better because we taught them how SQL works and how to use SQL. So that approach is really important because we teach the underlying way of how [web development] works, how databases work, how querying works, [all] before we give them a much friendlier way to go about doing the same type of code. So you could do it in SQL or in Ruby. So the first four weeks are devoted to Ruby and SQL so…you are able to create an entire application that has a front-end a backend and has a database.

The only thing missing is more responsive design on the front-end. So after that the course goes into teaching JavaScript and the React library. What React allows us to do is build single-page applications, which means even though the URL might seem like it’s changing at the top, you’re actually not requesting the page each time you navigate. It’s just that the app loads once, and when you use it, the app moves much faster. So typically before when you clicked through sites it would reload the page each time on a network and was very noticeable. And now you load the app once and, clicking through it, doesn’t have that lag time.

What’s the learning process like? Does it change over time?

The learning process through App Academy definitely changes over time. The meat of the program has a similar structure where the students have nightly homework, have to prepare for new material and lecture the following day. After lecture, the students have a series of projects specific to that day that they work on with their partner. That is the bulk of the work. We do have solo days, where they work independently and where they can ask questions if they are stuck. The learning process becomes a little bit different after we teach the core parts of the curriculum. It transitions to independent learning and to the direction the student wants to take. So we have several projects where the student has a lot of freedom in choosing their technologies or the design of their project and there’s a lot of self-learning involved with that.

App Academy is known for its rigor — tell me about that.

App Academy is an extremely fast paced program. We promise you can be a software engineer in three months. That means that every week is very rigorous and we need to ensure students are on pace every week. As you mentioned, that means pretty strong deadline and tests to ensure [students] feel comfortable enough with the material to move on. So everyday there’s homework, and every week or so there’s a small exam.

So it’s not easy. But from what I hear from students, social dynamics are really great here and make more of a difference that in other bootcamps.

We try very hard to cultivate an inclusive atmosphere where everyone feels welcome and becomes friends over time. When you’re working with people every day for the entire day you really get to know them. Students work every day [with a new partner] so over the course of the program, [they] get to meet every student. Additionally, we break students up into smaller groups so they can have more intimate connections, and are also paired with a teaching assistant that helps them succeed. And every Friday we try to have social events that encourages the students to just wind down after a hard week and get to know each other better. So I think that we intentionally try to cultivate a welcoming culture. There’s some camaraderie in working hard together.

A lot of students thinking about taking the course fear they won’t make it. Can their anxiety actually lead to self-confidence over time?

It’s a pretty scary thing to risk changing your life and to change your career path. And there’s a lot of fears that comes with that. “Am I smart enough, will I be successful, is it really worth the risk to try to change my life?” I think when students enter the program, a lot of fears start to become overwritten.

But they see when they come in, that one, their partner is in the exact same boat that they are and everybody’s learning new material at once, conquering that fear together. And by working through it and struggling, they actually can do it. They’re empowered to learn. They see that in such a short period of time they were able to go from zero programming experience to knowing how to build an entire full-stack application in two months. That’s incredible and it’s super empowering. I think that if you can see that you can do that, then you can do anything.

Tell me an example of a student with intense fear that made it.

There are many students that came in with nothing, going through the program, and really struggling. [Some go] through the program and we’re not necessarily certain of them while they were in it but when entering the job search, they work hard and land the job they wanted.

One of my students came into the program with no coding experience and was very nervous every single week. And every week I checked in with her and she felt like she was always behind. I told her that based on her performance, I reassured her she was doing absolutely fine. She was working well with the material, was demonstrating it, and was working well with her pairs. But still there was self-doubt. But as she entered the full-stack [part] of the curriculum and started building her entire application all by herself, she saw she was able to create everything she thought of [in her mind] and implemented features that weren’t even required. And she enjoyed the process of building the project. That continued as she went into the job search and eventually got a job doing this exact thing she loved. I’m really proud of her and happy she was able to build that self-confidence.

How did the teaching staff’s empathy help you personally?

Working for App Academy has been fantastic. I feel like I’ve learned a lot of what is important to learn and grow at a job, and what is important to be successful and happy. I feel like the team that we have here teaches [as] a really cohesive unit. It’s a team that’s great at empathy but also at solving technical problems. And I feel like I’ve learned what is pretty important to me. [As I move forward] I want to join a company that I feel allows me to [similarly] grow both very technically in a role and continues to push the boundaries of what I know every day but also has a lot of interpersonal interaction, communication, and collaboration.

A lot of people come to App Academy because of the great network. Explain how it helps students, specifically.

I think a lot of opportunity comes from joining the course because you enter with a group of individuals working really hard and motivated to learn the content and to enter the field, so when you bring together individuals like that, then, in addition to everything the course proved, you get a strong network of people who want to keep learning and keep growing and pushing each other. So that is how you get a lot of students going to hackathons and winning [them] completely outside of App Academy. You have students going to networking events and being fearless about it. So I think a lot of opportunities come from both sides of that.

You believe strongly programming is for everyone. Why is that?

I think that programming is in general a creative process, just like writing or making something. There’s a lot of power that comes with being able to write simple programs, being able to understand how computers work and how computation works. So I think everyone can benefit from learning programming because it just empowers them to solve problems and to make things they might have ideas about.

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/app-academy-self-learning-anxiety-bootcamp-life-programming-everyone/feed/05 Great Examples of App Academy Student Programming Projectshttps://blog.appacademy.io/5-great-examples-of-app-academy-student-programming-projects/
https://blog.appacademy.io/5-great-examples-of-app-academy-student-programming-projects/#respondWed, 18 Apr 2018 22:38:43 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5359Checking out final student projects at App Academy is exciting. Throughout the full-time 12-week course, students work through examples of what web apps do, what they look like, and most importantly, how they work. By the time they arrive at the end of the course, students learn enough to create a functioning piece of tech […] More

]]>Checking out final student projects at App Academy is exciting. Throughout the full-time 12-week course, students work through examples of what web apps do, what they look like, and most importantly, how they work. By the time they arrive at the end of the course, students learn enough to create a functioning piece of tech they can show to prospective employers. While students push to build something special, teachers are sometimes surprised at how innovative builds get.

Over the past calendar year, we’ve seen students come up with different types of games, web applications, and mobile apps. Some use cool graphic libraries and fun design choices while others take established products and remake them with their own twist. In all, students express their burgeoning skills in awesome ways.

App Academy teaching staff talked to us about the following projects but they’re just a sample of the great variety and quality of apps produced by students. We analyzed them with the help of one of the bootcamp’s top instructors.

Check them out!

3D PongandJS Hero

Created by Taylor Wong (3D Pong) and Jay Schwartz (JS Hero), these are JavaScript projects that use the three.js library to render 3D graphics. Three.js is a cross-browser library and Application Programming Interface (API) usually used to “create and display animated 3D computer graphics in a web browser,” according to Wikipedia. The instructor says both of the apps are visually interesting and “not at all” within the scope of what we teach in the curriculum. This means they’re a “testament to how quickly our students can pick up new technologies and run with them that they can get results like this in a one-week period.”

Looking at 3D Pong, notice that highlights around the arena move according to where the ball is to help depth perception. “I thought that was a very clever trick that showcased some design chops as well,” the App Academy instructor tells us.

Code Dash

This was a “Flex Project” completed by just two students on deadline, Ameet Vadhia and Vickie Chen, an unusually small group for this type of project. The course instructor tells us the students impressed technically with their original idea and because it did not sacrifice aesthetics.

The game itself is a two-player online code-typing contest that, the instructor says, uses “a combination of Websockets and logic to simulate a real-time typing experience for players.” We tried playing it several times against the computer and other players. We won a couple of times!

Code Ninja

This project was made by a single student, Julian Compagni Portis, who overcame early technical problems to come up with something quite interesting. According to our instructor, the build “involves a lot of complex and dangerous features” including a user “repl”, which allows users to type code directly into the website to be executed. REPLs are Read–Eval–Print Loops, known as “shells” in computer programming environments that take single user inputs.

“[The student] had to do a lot of legwork to keep his website secure in spite of this, and also just included TONS of features that we didn’t think he’d have time for. [Including] bots and testing for each task. It truly is an above-and-beyond project and something we only allowed the student to do because he showed so much passion for it,” our instructor said.

Stocks Overflow

Created by Angelica Velasco, this stock application has a strong design background based off a then-unreleased version of the Robin Hood stock-and-finance app.

The developer took cues from Robin Hood’s screenshots of a pre-release version of the technology and decided to create her own. Almost as if she had come up with the idea.

“In spite of not even having a complete website to work from, she did an amazing job. Turning out a project that was amazingly polished and just beautiful to look at. She also integrated multiple Finance APIs to generate the market data,” the instructor told us.

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/5-great-examples-of-app-academy-student-programming-projects/feed/0Q+A: App Academy’s Jeff Fiddler on Programming Languages, Updating the Curriculum, and the Business Modelhttps://blog.appacademy.io/qa-app-academy-head-instructor-jeff-fiddler-on-languages-updating-the-curriculum-and-the-business-model/
https://blog.appacademy.io/qa-app-academy-head-instructor-jeff-fiddler-on-languages-updating-the-curriculum-and-the-business-model/#respondTue, 17 Apr 2018 17:23:01 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5349The impact educational institutions have on their students can be measured by the quality of their teachers, the depth of students’ preparation for real-world problems, and the strength of the curriculum. Professional schools in particular focus on the quality of their curriculum because they fit large amounts of information into tight schedules and have to […] More

The impact educational institutions have on their students can be measured by the quality of their teachers, the depth of students’ preparation for real-world problems, and the strength of the curriculum. Professional schools in particular focus on the quality of their curriculum because they fit large amounts of information into tight schedules and have to update any changes to match real-world jobs.

But what does a modern curriculum look like at a code bootcamp? Some of the well-known ones teach one language while others, like App Academy, teach multiple languages. The reason behind those choices is connected to the technology companies that use languages like JavaScript.

In order to provide incoming students with in-depth understanding of the choices behind the curriculum, we spoke to App Academy curriculum head Jeff Fiddler. We asked him about the core tenets of the course, how they teach fundamentals, and what makes App Academy’s choices different.

The conversation has been edited for time and space and we’ve added a few videos throughout.

App Academy teaches different programming languages. But other bootcamps teach one. Why did a/A do that and what’s the benefit?

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We’ve always produced engineers that are prepared for the market as much they possibly can be. That requires good breadth of skills and to be able to be successful with different tech stacks [languages]. The majority of our curriculum uses JavaScript as the main tool but many go on to build with Rails, Ruby, Django, or others. We want students to be comfortable with object-oriented programming. Not every company [they’ll be working for] has a new app that they built in 2018. Some will maintain stuff they built ten years ago.

But we require them to understand the philosophy on the way apps are designed. So no matter what it is, they’re going to be able to become leaders of their team regardless of whether they have exposure to a particular programming language. We teach strong fundamentals so that no matter what tech stack you’re going to, you’ll be prepared.

We’ve always emphasized a deep understanding. No matter how complicated the system is, it’s made up of basics, and the better your understanding of fundamentals, the more successful you’re going to be digesting and working with any level of complexity.

Currently, we teach Ruby, SQL, JS, HTML, CSS and the frameworks are Rails, React, and Redux. React and Redux are front-end JS frameworks and Rails is a full-stack ruby framework.

[A negative about only learning one language] is that if you’re suffering from impostor syndrome and…there’s a language that is totally different from what you did, then they’re going to think they’re not up to the challenge. When the fact is that they’re good enough. [This doesn’t mean] that we compromise the amount that we teach. We hold them to a high standard even more. We try to make sure they are the best fit for as many roles as possible.

[We chose these languages] because they are extremely popular. JavaScript is the most popular programming language. It’s on everything and that’s why we emphasize it so much in our curriculum. Rails is a popular framework.

If teaching people how to learn is at the core of what you do, what does that look like?

We know people have so much more potential before they came here to us and we teach them how to reach that. People are put into situations [during the course] where they have to solve their own problems and come to their own solutions and build strategies for overcoming problems. And that takes a special kind of thinking. We teach, for example, the fundamentals of debugging and push them to solve their own problems by looking up information, about where to learn things.

Tell me about the history of the curriculum. How’d get to its current state?

Our first boot camp taught iOS but after looking at market trends, we figured out the best thing would be to teach Rails, the most popular full stack tool. So we rewrote the curriculum. Then we saw students had a need to learn intense programming and we started teaching the front-end engineering framework Backbone, which was hot at the time. The great thing about BackBone is its simplicity; if something goes wrong you can send students directly to the source code.

But over time, the complexity of web apps people were making exceeded what Backbone [could do] and so companies started to adopt new things like React. So once again monitoring market trends, we saw it was winning the front-end market war, that knowing React was an asset for students looking for jobs. So we added it to the main curriculum. Then, over time, people found that state management was a challenge on the front-end with React, we needed a good framework to keep track of state so we adopted Redux, and starting teaching that two years ago. Redux and React together are the fundamentals of our front-end engineering stack.

In the future, when we find the market is requiring people to know a certain tech, we’ll be happy to move on and use that. It’s important for us that the future is built with good, reliable code. So we want people to write the best software they can.

Which resources do you use to find programming languages?

There are a millions ways to find out. Stack Overflow does a great job reporting on what tech people use. Github makes it easy to figure out what’s rising and popular. On NPM, you can see the most important modules that are rising and falling. Another place is StackShare. It’s a great place to find tech stacks that companies are using.

This is a great tip for anyone looking for a job — pretty much any website is on StackShare and you can see which technologies they use. If you want to work for a local startup or a specific company, you can see [if they have] Rails backend, React and Redux. Maybe they are using Amazon’s AWS and Slack and Jira to manage their business. That might be useful to know before getting into an interview.

Additionally, we have an awesome network of alums in the industry. [So] we can get good insight. Currently we have a lot of students asking for jobs and we work closely with them and their job coaches to keep a close eye on the type of questions they are being asked and then we can use that to guide our curriculum development.

Tell me about business model, the reason you teach what you teach.

App Academy has alway been built around giving people jobs as effectively as possible. That’s what our business requires to be successful. Our curriculum needs to follow the market so that everyone that follows our program is going to get a job as soon as possible. All of our curriculum is designed to get a job as quickly as possible.

Because of that business model, it’s crucial our curriculum is the perfect fit for the market where we exist. So it’s essential for us to know what hiring managers and recruiters are looking for when it comes to hiring our students.

We put everything on the line. We say that if our program doesn’t work for you then you don’t owe us anything. So we have to make sure that our curriculum is going to hit the target and that target is getting you a job as soon as possible and it has to be true. And it is. And it works again and again. We have crafted this curriculum over years and are sure we are producing the perfect curriculum for the tech scene currently. Our business requires it.

]]>https://blog.appacademy.io/qa-app-academy-head-instructor-jeff-fiddler-on-languages-updating-the-curriculum-and-the-business-model/feed/0Without Fear: How to Prepare for the Whiteboarding Interviewhttps://blog.appacademy.io/no-fear-how-to-prepare-for-the-whiteboarding-interview/
https://blog.appacademy.io/no-fear-how-to-prepare-for-the-whiteboarding-interview/#respondWed, 11 Apr 2018 22:05:32 +0000https://blog.appacademy.io/?p=5350“I hear and I forgot, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” — Confucius. Preparing for a coding interview seems straightforward enough, right? All you need to do, seemingly, is study every practice problem you can find. If you’ve seen everything, then you’re prepared for anything. But that’s the wrong way to […] More

]]>“I hear and I forgot, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” — Confucius.

Preparing for a coding interview seems straightforward enough, right? All you need to do, seemingly, is study every practice problem you can find. If you’ve seen everything, then you’re prepared for anything. But that’s the wrong way to think about it.

As anyone who has interviewed a few times knows, standing in front of a blank whiteboard with a few senior engineers looking over your shoulder feels a lot different than reading a book at home. Even if you’re handed a problem you’ve seen before, the pressure of the interview can freeze you up. And it only gets scarier when someone throws you a curveball.

But don’t worry, there are a few techniques you can use to take your preparation to the next level.

Check out my tips for the best way to prepare for a whiteboarding interview below.

Enhance Your Communication

Interviewers evaluate candidates on how they solve a problem, not just whether they get the right answer in the end. You’ve probably heard that talking through your thought process is important, but most candidates don’t practice this ahead of time. And so you must.

Communication is important because your interviewer needs to understand exactly what you’re doing and why. He or she is not a mind reader. If you don’t verbalize your thoughts, they will have no idea whether you’re systematically breaking down the problem or just hopelessly lost. Instead, if you tell them what you’re thinking throughout the process, the interviewers will often give you a nudge in the right direction.

In addition, there are times when you just can’t finish a problem in the allotted time. But if you’ve shown your interviewer you were making steady progress the whole way, you can still make a strong showing. I’ve seen many candidates, including myself, receive offers in similar situations.

To communicate well under fire, you need to practice. Even though it seems like talking is something we all do pretty naturally, the pressure of an interview can rob you of your voice.

To see just how natural it really is to communicate in tough interview situations, I recommend that you take a video of yourself working through a whiteboarding problem. Afterwards, watch it immediately, while the experience is still fresh. Then don’t be afraid to be critical. Communication is a chance to explore, analyze, and ask questions so don’t just dictate what you write. Also, avoid “dead air” — it’s fine to focus silently for 30 seconds or so, but after that you’re asking your interviewer to read your mind. And remember, your interviewer is a human being. Don’t talk into the whiteboard for 40 minutes. Instead, turn and have a conversation, be confident, and even make eye contact now and then.

Every time you do a practice problem, you should talk to your “interviewer” whether there’s actually someone in the room or not. You’ll feel weird talking to yourself at first, but if do it every day it will be second nature by the time you get to the real interview.

Finally, record yourself every few sessions so you can chart your progress.

One extra tip here: Figure out how to you chew gum and walk at the same time. A trick strong interviewers use is to separate speaking and writing. If you try to do both at the same time you’ll just end up dictating what you’re writing. So take turns. Brainstorm and analyze out loud. Then, when you’re ready to write, stop talking so you can focus. This will keep you organized and on task.

Get Comfortable With a Specific Platform

If you’re preparing for a whiteboardinginterview, you need to practice on a whiteboard. If you don’t have access to a whiteboard, at least use paper and pencil. Writing and erasing is way slower than typing and candidates are often thrown by the change of pace on interview day.

Most candidates also tend to run out of space, so practice managing your whiteboard real estate. This means getting used to separating diagramming and brainstorming space from the area where you’ll actually code up your implementation..

If the interview is conducted on a computer instead of a whiteboard, find out what platform you’ll be using. Don’t be afraid to ask. In fact, it feels very different to code in a plain text editor with no syntax highlighting than in an IDE where you can run and debug your code.

When I interviewed for Airbnb, I was told in advance that the interview would be conducted via codepen. I spent a few days coding up widgets using their UI. When it came to the phone interview I didn’t have to struggle with the platform and was able to focus on solving the challenge and passing the phone screen, which I did.

Lower the Pressure of the Moment

You’re probably going to be nervous when you get to the interview. This makes sense — after all, your livelihood is at stake!

So get friends, colleagues, teachers, or family to be mock interviewers. Better yet, join a meetup for people who want to practice interviewing so you can whiteboard in front of strangers. You’ll be more relaxed each time. You’ll still feel a twinge of nerves at the interview, but you’ll be used to dealing with it.

Whiteboarding Time Management

In my experience, most technical interviews last about 30 minutes. Use a timer when you practice and budget time for brainstorming, implementation, and testing. Most candidates are afraid of running out of time and so dive into implementation before they’re ready. If you’ve been practicing with a timer, you won’t fall into this trap.

You should also practice at the same time of day as your real interview. If you practice at 8PM every night it’s going to feel strange when you show up for an 8AM interview.

Focus

One hour a day of highly focused work is far more effective than three hours spent casually reading through solutions with a Frasier TV marathon in the background. Your interviewer probably won’t be too impressed that you know the name of the sitcom Daphne acted in as a child (but just in case, it was Mind Your Knickers).

Here’s how I break down my hour:

5 minutes: Review. Read your notes from the last few sessions. Write down one thing that you will focus on during this session.

30 minutes: Work through a single problem. Use a timer. Practice good communication.

25 minutes: Evaluate. If you recorded this session watch the recording. If you worked with a mock interviewer, ask them for feedback.

Write down at least one thing you did well and one thing you would like to improve. How well did you achieve the goal you set for yourself at the beginning of the session? These are the notes you will review at the beginning of your next session.

Go Crush it

Training this way puts you in control. You’ll tackle whiteboarding problems with confidence, even when you come up against a problem unlike anything you’ve seen before. If you’re not careful, you might even have some fun.